Keith: Standing in the Shadows

Mike Tribby

After years lost in Mick Jagger's media afterglow, Keith Richards has become a hot item. You can't toss a guitar pick without hitting a Keef bio. Booth's second Rolling Stones book tells the story with some new twists. His tone is evocative, even intimate, and the way he disputes other versions of Keith and Stones stories is striking. He's particularly critical of Bockris' "Keith Richards" (1992). Booth lists several areas of disagreement with Bockris, including even a date discrepancy corrected in later editions. Booth sounds so authoritative you assume he's correct, yet sometimes his contentions are questionable, as when he suggests the Hell's Angels were "not" hired as security for the Stones' ill-fated Altamont concert. Like many superstar biographers, Booth seems to regard his subject as superhuman and takes great pains to make him appear so. Still, his intimate portrait of one of the great molders of contemporary pop music is, for all its brevity, rich with detail and of great value to rock fans and historians.